Artists Who Give Their Music Away

[trurl]

Many (most?) artists have little-to-no-control over their music once it enter the marketplace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/op...black-box.html

We're not talking about that though, we're talking about a specific situation on Bandcamp and similar services.

[Plasmatopia]

I don't really like getting music for free. Paying for it makes me feel better about supporting the band and keeps me from acquiring more music than I can reasonably digest. It just feels wrong to take advantage of the ability to pay $0 when I know it cost the band money to make the recording (even if just for the equipment to record in their basement). Paying sort of keeps me honest. It's my tiny way of trying (against all odds!) to make sure that music doesn't completely lose all value in this day and age...

For a download I don't like to pay as much - usually about $10 for a studio album, probably less if it's one of a zillion live shows the band puts up for download. For a CD $12 would be minimum, but I'd probably pay a couple dollars more unless I really didn't have faith in the quality.

[Steve F.]

Sony, Warner and Universal seem to be doing alright. Maybe the problem isn't the piracy of downloading, but the pirate behavior of the increasingly consolidated, increasingly secretive and increasingly larcenous music industry giants?

It's always easy to blame the man.

[rcarlberg]

It's always easy to blame the man.

And often appropriate.

[3RDegree_Robert]

I think if you don't pay anything for the music, put it on your music player and enjoy it, then find a way to pay for it later by buying a shirt or going back and paying for the download or buying a cd.

[Steve F.]

And often appropriate.

I call horseshit.

You are making a straw man argument and you know it.

People love pencils. Pencils make them feel good. Each pencil that they like (they don't like all pencils) makes them feel good in a different way, so they collect them.

Due to a number of circumstances, quite quickly the value of pencils is devalued.

But people still like pencils. Very much. They claim to like them more than ever. The are just no longer willing to pay for them.

However the makers of pencils find that a great number of people who used to be willing to pay for pencils are no longer willing to pay for pencils.

So, there are all these pencil makers out there, trying to get attention and the way they are hoping to get you to pay attention to their particular pencil's traits is by having the pencils in a cup that says "Pay what you want".

The O.P. asks, "If you take a pencil and do not offer payment in return, obviously it is legal, but is that morally ok? And do you think the pencil makers make any money when they do this?"

That's what he asked. Nothing else.

So tell me what that has to do with 'the man'?

[rcarlberg]

So tell me what that has to do with 'the man'?

I didn't bring up 'the man,' you did.

And the O.P. wasn't talking about taking CDs (pencils) for free, only digital downloads -- which have zero cost of replication.

I answered the O.P.'s original question, a couple of times. My comments about the major labels were in response to the article link somebody posted, that pointed out that the M.L.s pay download royalties to the artists on the same formula they used to use for physical product, which had much higher costs of production.

I've always contended that "home taping" and "illegal downloading" are not killing music. What's killing music -- if indeed it is dying, which is not a foregone conclusion -- is record labels run by bean counters who have no interest in music itself.

[Steve F.]

I didn't bring up 'the man,' you did.

Yeah?

Sony, Warner and Universal seem to be doing alright. Maybe the problem isn't the piracy of downloading, but the pirate behavior of the increasingly consolidated, increasingly secretive and increasingly larcenous music industry giants?

I'm posting about the fact that everyone loves music so much yet they won't stick a fucking DIME directly in the pocket of the musicians, and want to discuss here whether or not they should feel guilty for doing so.

Yet you are still using the straw man argument about 'the man' for the fact that no 'fan' is willing to admit that they don't think that the music they love so much is actually worth a dime to them and they want their peers to assure them that it's ok, because everyone does it.

Got it now?

I know you aren't stupid, so you must be purposefully avoiding the point. And you brought it up; I wouldn't have posted in this thread otherwise.

[rcarlberg]

Well, I'll yield the podium to a much more expert witness than me, David Byrne.

Everyone should be celebrating — but many of us who create, perform and record music are not. Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like “Happy”) on Pandora or Spotify are common. Obviously, the situation for less-well-known artists is much more dire. For them, making a living in this new musical landscape seems impossible. I myself am doing O.K., but my concern is for the artists coming up: How will they make a life in music?

It’s easy to blame new technologies like streaming services for the drastic reduction in musicians’ income. But on closer inspection we see that it is a bit more complicated. Even as the musical audience has grown, ways have been found to siphon off a greater percentage than ever of the money that customers and music fans pay for recorded music. Many streaming services are at the mercy of the record labels (especially the big three: Sony, Universal and Warner), and nondisclosure agreements keep all parties from being more transparent.

Perhaps the biggest problem artists face today is that lack of transparency. I’ve asked basic questions of both the digital services and the music labels and been stonewalled. For example, I asked YouTube how ad revenue from videos that contain music is shared (which should be an incredibly basic question). They responded that they didn’t share exact numbers, but said that YouTube’s cut was “less than half.” An industry source (who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information) told me that the breakdown is roughly 50 percent to YouTube, 35 percent to the owner of the master recording and 15 percent to the publisher.

This is also worth reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/bu...pgtype=article

[Steve F.]

^ ^ ^

Back to blaming the man.

We were talking about Bandcamp.

[rcarlberg]

We were talking about Bandcamp.

Yes we were, and I said most artists (who offer their music direct to the consumer, as on Bandcamp) expect most consumers will be fair and honest in paying for their downloads. PWYW is a valid and viable paradigm.

It is only the M.L.s who despise that paradigm, and so end up fighting that small percentage of consumers for whom PWYW is a sum of $0.00.

The goodwill of the consumers is lost, the marketplace becomes a battleground and the artist is the loser.

[hFx]

The New Business Model

I agree! I think the PROS outweigh the CONS for the artist but again not very likely that every consumer will wade through lots of mediocre releases to find the gems. Networking gets ever more important and "influencers" will become the new middlemen?

[rcarlberg]

I purchase my music almost exclusively on Bandcamp. I encounter many artists who use the "name your price" approach to getting their music out there.

I think Yves raises some interesting questions, in particular what new marketing strategies will look like in these days of downloads and digital distribution.

Speaking for myself, my buying habits have undergone at least two complete overhauls since the days when I spent hours and hours thumbing through the racks in local record stores. First, I started buying nearly everything online because I could search for what I wanted across many vendors -- as opposed to going from store-to-store hoping to accidentally run across the particular album I was looking for.

Lately though I've mostly been buying digital downloads. I'm still old-fashioned enough to prefer physical product (having lost a couple of hard drives in my life!) but with the tools available today it's a snap to burn a CD-R and even edit out bad tracks / combine two albums into one as the mood strikes. I use only legitimate reliable legal download sites (I was an early adopter of Napster but the amount of misinformation/incomplete/damaged files there was appalling!) and I'm happy to pay a fee for high-quality downloads.

I'm usually disappointed, though, looking for artwork online. I would gladly pay $5 for an official PDF of an album's artwork. I can print my own.

And a self-printed self-burned CD-R isn't going to compete with a "real" CD in the used CD store so I don't think I'm diluting the market.

I suspect pricing a download at about $5, and making a separate artwork download available for another $5 (maybe without a UPC), would be pretty popular with consumers. Some of us only want the music (for our iPods), and some of us want to create our own CD-Rs. Some of us will still buy the "store-bought" manufactured CD for $15-20.

It seems to me, labels could offer downloads and artwork for a low price like $5 each, since those have to be created to do a CD anyway, and distribution costs would be zip. There's probably no royalties due on artwork so that's pure profit, and a $5 music download would still leave room for artist royalties since the overhead is zilch. $11 for all the elements to make your own CD-R (the jewelcases are a buck apiece at OfficeMax) versus $20 for the whole shebang pre-made seems like a workable model to me.

Would be interested in hearing pros and cons from others -- especially you Steve.

[klothos]

I think Yves raises some interesting questions, in particular what new marketing strategies will look like in these days of downloads and digital distribution.

Speaking for myself, ........SNIP.................like a workable model to me.

Would be interested in hearing pros and cons from others -- especially you Steve.

But doesn't this all go back to what i was saying earlier? For people like you that grew up in the physical product eras, what you said makes sense. But the newer generation(s) that understand music as files instead of album with a cover thatcan be held and the tracks it contains, some of what you mentioned may not be considered priorities - or even neceesaties - when making a decision on a download purchase, so little weight may be given to those factors as a purchasing incentive

[rcarlberg]

That's why offering it modularly makes sense to me. Individual songs for 99 cents, whole albums for $5, album artwork for $5. Buy as little or as much as you want.

I think asking $15 for a download (music only) is nuts. I suspect it drives a lot of people to steal it for free.

Of course artists on Bandcamp can afford to go PWYW. They have no overhead (or less, anyway).

[Steve F.]

I think asking $15 for a download (music only) is nuts. I suspect it drives a lot of people to steal it for free.

People who don't want to pay for music will steal music whether it is $15 or $5. The price is not an issue in terms of theft. People don't steal music because they can't afford it. People steal music because they can steal music and because they perceive the probability of genuine personal consequences happening to them personally to be quite small.

The price of something may very well be used as a justification for theft, but we could price all of our CDs (whether physical or digital) at $5.00 and after the novelty of them being $5.00 wore off, we would not see any decrease in theft.

[Plasmatopia]

I think Yves raises some interesting questions, in particular what new marketing strategies will look like in these days of downloads and digital distribution.

Speaking for myself, my buying habits have undergone at least two complete overhauls since the days when I spent hours and hours thumbing through the racks in local record stores. First, I started buying nearly everything online because I could search for what I wanted across many vendors -- as opposed to going from store-to-store hoping to accidentally run across the particular album I was looking for.

Lately though I've mostly been buying digital downloads. I'm still old-fashioned enough to prefer physical product (having lost a couple of hard drives in my life!) but with the tools available today it's a snap to burn a CD-R and even edit out bad tracks / combine two albums into one as the mood strikes. I use only legitimate reliable legal download sites (I was an early adopter of Napster but the amount of misinformation/incomplete/damaged files there was appalling!) and I'm happy to pay a fee for high-quality downloads.

I'm usually disappointed, though, looking for artwork online. I would gladly pay $5 for an official PDF of an album's artwork. I can print my own.

And a self-printed self-burned CD-R isn't going to compete with a "real" CD in the used CD store so I don't think I'm diluting the market.

I suspect pricing a download at about $5, and making a separate artwork download available for another $5 (maybe without a UPC), would be pretty popular with consumers. Some of us only want the music (for our iPods), and some of us want to create our own CD-Rs. Some of us will still buy the "store-bought" manufactured CD for $15-20.

It seems to me, labels could offer downloads and artwork for a low price like $5 each, since those have to be created to do a CD anyway, and distribution costs would be zip. There's probably no royalties due on artwork so that's pure profit, and a $5 music download would still leave room for artist royalties since the overhead is zilch. $11 for all the elements to make your own CD-R (the jewelcases are a buck apiece at OfficeMax) versus $20 for the whole shebang pre-made seems like a workable model to me.

Would be interested in hearing pros and cons from others -- especially you Steve.

Not completely unreasonable by any means, but I'd rather pay a couple dollars more and not have to deal with burning my own disc, printing out artwork, or have to buy, maintain, and keep supplies on hand for the equipment involved.

[Yves]

I'm posting about the fact that everyone loves music so much yet they won't stick a fucking DIME directly in the pocket of the musicians, and want to discuss here whether or not they should feel guilty for doing so.

I have stuck plenty of dimes, quarters,and dollars into the pockets of musicians, directly ot indirectly, for decades. I have bought and re-bought the same releases simply because they were packaged differently or somebody ran the masters through a console 20 years later to tweak them. I have paid 500% mark-ups on things like T-shirts at a show because it supports the bands. I have purchased more tickets than I could use for certain gigs/ festivals in order to help the promoters. I have done my share.

The bands I have encountered with the "name your price" business plan do not fall under "music I love so much". They're artists that, had they been asking for 10.00 for their download, I would have passed. I did not seek ways to circumvent paying them, they are the ones who presented me with the opportunity to simply "take" their music. And yet, having done so twice, I still suffer from a bit of a guilty conscience; whereas the artists themselves are probably happy that someone is taking enough interest in their work to download it even if they are not paying a dollar for it.

[rcarlberg]

New bands -- bands who need to make a name for themselves -- might resort to PWYW to get their name out there. If they're good, the next time I bought music from them I'd probably chip in a few extra $$ to make up for the "promo album."

[Steve F.]

I I have done my share.

I was never implying that you personally have not done your share. I wouldn't know. Although feeling guilty for not paying is a good sign, imo.

But not giving over a dime is the mindset today.

And, I must ask, if you can listen to the music, which you can on bandcamp, and you aren't interested in it enough to pay for it, why are you downloading it?

the artists themselves are probably happy that someone is taking enough interest in their work to download it even if they are not paying a dollar for it.

I think that that's possible and I also think it is just as likely that the artists themselves:

1. are over-all frustrated over the fact that the only way they can get anyone to listen is by giving the music away

2. want to know why we can't sign them.

[klothos]

I think that that's possible and I also think it is just as likely that the artists themselves:

1. are over-all frustrated over the fact that the only way they can get anyone to listen is by giving the music away

In the modern flooded market era, that is definitely a possibility

2. want to know why we can't sign them.

That needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, doesn't it? Some artists may be happy doing the DIY method for whatever quantifies as a "successful career". Others, that may want to seek a label, probably arent thinking that far ahead yet. In general (and correct me if I'm wrong) a label really doesn't want to invest into a new artist unless they can prove they can make a return on investment, so a band may be in the stages of creating "buzz" and a fanbase for an EPK to eventually send to a label -- perhaps, at which point, they will remove product or change to static pricepoints

[Steve F.]

That needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, doesn't it?

yes, of course. I was being a smart-ass.

In general (and correct me if I'm wrong) a label really doesn't want to invest into a new artist unless they can prove they can make a return on investment, so a band may be in the stages of creating "buzz" and a fanbase for an EPK to eventually send to a label -- perhaps, at which point, they will remove product or change to static pricepoints

I wouldn't consider signing a band who is giving their music away. If they don't believe in it enough to charge for it, I'm not doing the heavy lifting for their career.

Others may not feel the same way.

[klothos]

I wouldn't consider signing a band who is giving their music away. If they don't believe in it enough to charge for it, I'm not doing the heavy lifting for their career.

that's fair enough

[ThomasKDye]

I wouldn't consider signing a band who is giving their music away. If they don't believe in it enough to charge for it, I'm not doing the heavy lifting for their career.

Others may not feel the same way.

What about a sampler track? Kyo, from this forum, linked to a sampler CD of various artists, which I downloaded. It made me become a Haken and a Relocator fan, and I subsequently bought their actual releases.

I've found that to be a great way to find new artists to actually financially SUPPORT.

[Steve F.]

What about a sampler track?

We have samplers as well as individual tracks for all of our releases.

I'm talking about artists who give away everything they got.

Big difference to me between letting a potential audience know if they might like you and giving away everything you got.